Page:The Village - Crabbe (1783).djvu/11

 Nor you, ye poor, of letter'd scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O'ercome by labour and bow'd down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets sooth you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruin'd shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?

Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; From thence a length of burning land appears, Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears; Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye: There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infant threaten war; There